


Rebirth

by NanakiBH



Category: sweet pool
Genre: Alternate Ending, Blood and Gore, Holding Hands, M/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-17
Updated: 2013-09-17
Packaged: 2017-12-26 21:53:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/970684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NanakiBH/pseuds/NanakiBH
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter how many miles he put between them, there was nothing Youji could do to make himself forget Tetsuo. When the opportunity once again presents itself, he decides to defy reason and risk his own life to be with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rebirth

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after the true end. I felt a bit dissatisfied with where the endings stopped, so I felt like expanding on my own. Behold the results.

“What are you... doing here...?”

The doorbell had rang. Youji lifted himself from the couch, his limbs weary from work, and called out, telling whoever was waiting that he would be right there. He senselessly didn't check the peephole to see who was on the other side. Now, Youji's eyes refused to believe who they saw standing there in his doorway.

Tetsuo's hands rose and flew to his shoulders, as if pulled by a magnetic force. Youji shuddered.

“I found you.”

Those familiar words would have sounded nostalgic had they lived normal lives, but to Youji's ears, they sounded like the knell of an odious bell. They sunk to the pit of his stomach and sat there like a rock, weighty and unpleasant. The logic he'd built up in his head over the years they'd been apart told him that he needed to make Tetsuo leave, but it all seemed to fly away the second he breathed in that familiar scent.

It brought back dangerous memories, joggled his senses and his resolve, made his body remember the very primal, visceral way that it needed the one who touched him.

_Force him away._

He had to.

_Make him leave._

That was what he tried to do from the beginning, so why? What was he doing there? Surely, if he were there, he had a reason. Tetsuo must have remembered what his fall into the pool had caused him to forget. He surely must have realized why Youji had moved, why he intentionally placed this distance between them, so why had he come?

Was the allure so strong that he traveled all these miles to find him, unable to resist?

His head swimming with questions, Youji was unable to hold onto one for long enough to voice it before another surfaced at the front of his mind. This was bad, though. Quickly, he had to do something. He needed to find his words.

“You... can't be here,” he finally managed to bite out. It was physically painful. His reason was already reduced to tatters, his thoughts heavy, as if they were laid under a thick blanket. Still, he'd managed to say what he needed to say. Now he just needed Tetsuo to leave. Then things could go back to the way they were.

The way things were...

Did he want it to go back to that? Everything was so lonely without Tetsuo. He was the only person who really understood what it was like to live this way. If he made him leave now, he would regret it.

This was bad. Youji made his decision a long time ago. It was over. Nothing would happen as long as they stayed apart. They could live. If he allowed Tetsuo to get near him, there was no telling what would happen.

“I remembered,” Tetsuo said, stressing its significance. The sound of his voice made Youji's heart thump and his body ache. “I can't just go back now. I can't forget about you again.”

Youji was panicking. His body felt like it was on fire; from his ears to his chest to the very tips of his fingernails, he felt like he was going to combust. Tetsuo's words made him so happy, but it wasn't a happiness he could let himself indulge in. If he wanted to protect himself, he had to refuse him. Even if he had to be cruel, even if he had to act unlike himself, he had to push him away again.

But he couldn't, and the door closed behind them as he led Tetsuo into his apartment.

Tetsuo took a seat on the couch. Although every fiber of his being wanted Youji to take a seat next to him, he remained standing, the coffee table standing between them like a wall. He would've offered to get him a drink, if only to allow himself a few moments to think in another room, but Youji feared what might happen if he took his eyes off of him.

“What do you... plan to do?” he asked slowly, his voice unsteady. That wasn't the clearest way he could have phrased his question, but Tetsuo seemed to understand regardless.

“I want to be with you.”

They couldn't. The way his body was already reacting to Tetsuo's presence told Youji that he wouldn't be able to hold a normal relationship with him. At best, he would restrict Tetsuo from having sex with him, but he could tell how impossible that option was. It wasn't an option at all. He wanted to have sex with him. Just looking at him – his broad shoulders, his strong arms, his soft, tousled hair – Youji wanted to have sex with him.

“You can't,” he told him outright. He heard his own words as if they were spoken by someone else, but he felt proud of himself. “If you really remember... If you remember everything, then you know why we can't be together. It's dangerous for you to even be here right now.”

“Yeah,” Tetsuo agreed. The strong gaze that stared into Youji's eyes, however, didn't agree. His mouth said one thing, but his eyes said another. They were alive with a desire that wouldn't be satisfied until their bodies were touching.

Youji backed up a step, his feet silent on the carpeted floor. Tetsuo placed his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, lowering his lashes. Possibly, he was thinking, but it was still impossible for Youji to discern what was on his mind with that indecipherable expression on his face.

“If you understand that, please leave.” He wished that he sounded more convincing. His heart was torn in half, crying and begging for opposite things. It cried for Youji, for this miserable, unfortunate situation, but, against all reason, his heart wanted Tetsuo to stay.

To his surprise, Tetsuo's gaze fell. His eyes slowly searched the top of the coffee table, as if they were looking for something; a solution.

“I understand. But is there anything? Is there anything I can do?”

It made sense that he would have questions like that now that he'd just regained his memory, but what he didn't know was that it was a question Youji had already endlessly pondered on his own. He'd thought of many things. He put together pieces of what he learned from that terrifying evening in the chemistry room with Zenya and his raving father. He went to every library nearby, even some far away, but never came up with any information that could comfortably explain the nature of the thing that existed inside of him.

It was certainly a thing. It wasn't just an illness or a disease, and it wasn't an illusion. No matter how much he wished it were, it wasn't an illusion.

Simply, there was nothing Tetsuo could do.

But, possibly, there was something he, Youji, could do.

The second he opened his mouth to respond, he closed it again and gave it some more thought. The idea he had was flimsy and there was no guarantee that it would work. Worst of all, there might be no second chances if they attempted it. That was why he dismissed it from the start, but it helplessly came floating up, looking like a precious opportunity when he had Tetsuo sitting in front of him.

“I had an idea.”

Tetsuo hadn't been in his apartment for longer than five minutes, and he was already about to spout nonsense. This was just his life. It was laughable, but there was no point in feeling self-conscious about his ideas when nothing else made sense.

Looking deeply invested in what he had to say, Tetsuo leaned even farther forward, canting his head in interest.

“I think I know how to force it out.”

Something inside of Youji roiled when he spoke those words, as if it sensed his intent.

“Force it out?” Tetsuo asked. He sounded like he couldn't believe him, like he found it absurd, but his eyes remained fixed on him, silently imploring him to continue with this plan.

“I know you'll disagree. It feels wrong for me to even think it. A part of me... Something inside of me tries to keep me from even thinking about it, too, but you have to listen to me with your own ears.”

He watched Tetsuo swallow in slow motion. Closing his eyes, Youji stopped his breathing and tried to ignore the heady scent of him that assaulted his nose and the stirring it caused in his lower belly.

“In the accident, when my father died, the thing that was in him escaped and came toward me. At that time, the thing that's in me now was what had saved my life. But it wasn't there before then. I was always weak, but I was normal; the same as my sister. I don't know the ins and outs of how they reproduce or get around, but I feel fairly sure that I know how to make the thing in me leave.”

It looked like Tetsuo had heard him and understood what he was trying to say.

“It's too dangerous,” he said, no different than what Youji expected. “If you intend to harm yourself, I can't allow it.”

“If you want to be with me, it's the only way. It's the only thing I can think of.” He felt desperate and delirious, like he was going out of his mind. He was talking about killing himself now as if it were an everyday topic of discussion and he was trying to convince Tetsuo that killing himself was a good idea.

The being inside of Tetsuo felt threatened. It didn't want its precious mesu to die. They still needed to copulate.

If Youji let that happen, he didn't know what would come of it, but he was sure it wouldn't be anything good. Occasionally, he had dreams about it; the thing that would be born between him and Tetsuo. That part of Youji was always aching for him, waiting for Tetsuo to come back, possibly even calling out to him to draw him closer. Had he not known that it was a real thing that existed inside of him, he would have committed himself already for the kinds of horrific nightmares he had.

Worse, he worried that they weren't just nightmares, but premonitions. He knew with certainty that their offspring would be something terrible and it would mean something even more terrible for the two of them.

“I've already died once.” He had the strange feeling that it was more than once. “If you don't want me to try it, then you need to leave. If we're together, I know that we'll have sex. With the way we are right now, I know that I wouldn't be able to resist you.” You wrapped his arms around himself protectively. “Frankly, I feel terrified just standing in front of you now because... I...”

_I want you so badly._

Sensing his thoughts, Tetsuo's hands clenched tightly around the edge of the table, like he was trying to hold himself back. Youji was glad that he'd learned how to take more control of his impulses. If things were as they had been when they first met, he would have already been laying on the couch beneath Tetsuo.

His breathing heavy, it looked like it took Tetsuo effort to make himself sit back on the couch. The osu part of his being wanted Youji desperately. Youji's pulse raced and his heart beat sympathetically, wishing that he could give him the relief he desired.

“You understand, right?” he asked. “Maybe it's crazy. I don't know what's crazy anymore, honestly. If you agree to help me with this, though, we can do it right now. I've given a lot of thought to a moment like this. If you don't agree, then you have to leave.” An awful thought crossed his mind. “And if... if we try it and it doesn't work... You'll have to leave. There's really no other choice.”

There was. Of course there was, but he wasn't going to allow it. Even if it would finally quiet the beast within him, he could not indulge his carnal instincts before he removed the being that resided in him.

Tetsuo nodded solemnly.

His thoughts a blur, Youji led him to the bathroom. Opening the cabinet over the sink, he took out a bottle. He didn't need to hold it up for Tetsuo to see for him to know what it was he held.

“I don't know how long this will take, but try to wait it out with me.”

_Don't call for an ambulance if something bad happens,_ he wanted to say, but he felt like he was already troubling Tetsuo enough. Youji just didn't want to get involved with any more visits to the hospital, though, especially over something like this that could worry his sister if she found out.

After he closed the cabinet, he sat down on the floor in front of the sink and Tetsuo got down next to him, kneeling on one knee. His body was tense, but Youji could tell that he was resisting. He was tense because he was concerned.

As he twisted off the top of the bottle, Youji distantly thought that he should've felt more apprehensive. This wasn't something he'd ever done before, wasn't something that anyone should do, but he wasn't just anyone. He still didn't understand his own body, so anything he did now was just a guess. The amount of pills he had piled in the palm of his hands really could kill him.

Without taking another glance at Tetsuo, he crammed his hand to his face, shoving the fistful of pills into his mouth. Without any water, he felt each one as they traveled down, dryly hitting the back of his throat, making him feel like gagging. When they were all gone, disappeared into the depths of his stomach, he sat there, feeling strangely disconnected. He didn't know what he was waiting for. Aside from the deafening pounding of his heart in his own ears, he felt fine.

It was probably going to take a few minutes. Knowing that, he felt like the grim reaper was looming over his shoulder, readying the edge of his scythe around his neck.

A minute passed by. Maybe two. He suddenly felt something and looked down to find Tetsuo's hand grasping his clammy one, linking their fingers together. He was still watching him silently, waiting with him.

After another minute, he started to feel it. He started to sweat all over, unnaturally, from more than just nerves. His body was straining, every inch of him responding, then turning distressingly numb. Breathing rapidly, he began to worry that he was really going to die, that this plan wasn't going to do anything but kill _him_ , but then he felt it. His stomach tightened painfully and swelled. It felt like his stomach itself was trying to get up and extract itself from his body. No – it wasn't his stomach. Something else inside of him was moving. A part of him that he didn't even know existed was manifesting, getting up, moving.

It was getting increasingly more difficult to breathe, and he clung to Tetsuo's hand like an anchor. Tears, unbidden, sprung to the corners of Youji eyes and he started blabbering nonsense as he suddenly turned and clung to Tetsuo, digging his fingers into his back, gripping his shirt tightly. It suddenly felt impossible to take a breath and he felt like he was being torn apart, but there was nothing else he could do.

Tetsuo held him as Youji's body shook. His vision was wavering and his senses were all a mess, but Youji could tell that something was coming. He had to move away.

Forcibly, he pushed Tetsuo away and bent over, placing his hands firmly on the cold, tiled floor. His vision swam and he felt like he was on the verge of passing out, but he tried to keep his wits about him. He could tell that it was close and he needed to see it out to the end.

His stomach gave an agonizing, wrenching lurch, like the thing in him had taken a leap for its life, and then he felt something traveling upwards from his throat. With all of his remaining strength, he flexed the muscles of his abdomen and throat and tried to push it out – whatever it was.

In a wet gush of blood, vomit, and pills, something else came up from his stomach. For a horrifying moment, Youji's muddled mind worried that he had just vomited something vital, but as his eyes began to focus on it, he realized that it was moving, alive. It looked like it could have been a part of him, a piece of intestine or some other organ, but whatever it was, it clearly wasn't a part of normal human physiology.

His stomach tightened and he vomited again, throwing up whatever else remained in him: more pills, his meager lunch, and another piece of that strange thing. Unlike the first piece he released, it lay still, unmoving, as if it were a part torn from the former piece when it wrenched itself from Youji's body.

“Kill it,” he gasped between rough breaths, staring up at Tetsuo. There was a slight look of shock there, but Youji wasn't surprised to see it. “Do it. Kill it. Make sure it... doesn't stay alive.” 

Slowly, his gasping words seemed to make it through Tetsuo's head. He stood up at once, and, sparing it one more glance, he crushed the thing beneath his shoe. When he lifted it, it continued to squirm, so he squashed it again and kept ruthlessly smashing it until it moved no more.

Just in case that weren't enough, he procured a lighter from one of his back pockets and held the flame to its remains. Youji felt a slight wave of relief as he watched it burn, but his relief was short-lived as he felt another awful wave of nausea sweep over him.

He struggled over to the toilet and released whatever else needed to come from his stomach. He was glad to see that many of the pills had gone undigested and he hoped that vomiting would be enough to remove their effects from him completely. More than that, he hoped that they had done the job he intended.

A new, frightening sensation came to him. It was a familiar one; one that he still dealt with almost daily. Tears had already been coursing down his cheeks, but a fresh sob pushed pitifully past his lips as his hands fumbled with the fastenings of his pants. Tetsuo, remembering the nature of his body, rushed to assist him, helping him pull down his pants.

He didn't know what was happening anymore, but he clung to Tetsuo like his life depended on it.

His body was pouring sweat, the hair at the back of his neck sticking uncomfortably to his skin. It felt like his insides had been rearranged by the thing that came out of his mouth and now whatever was left was trying to make its way out of his other end. Groaning and sobbing weakly into Tetsuo's chest, he shut his eyes tightly and laid there on his side powerlessly as it came out of him.

It felt endless. It was nothing like how it usually felt.

It was like his body was trying to expel something unwanted.

His body.

At this startling realization, his eyes flew open. His body was responding to the thing inside of him the way it would respond to an intruder. It was in more pain than usual as it struggled to force out the foreign substances inside of him.

One after another, empty eggs bloodily poured onto the floor behind him. It was more than usual, like their regular cycle had been completely interrupted by his interference.

The whole proceeding couldn't have taken more than ten minutes, but to Youji's devastated body, it felt like it had been an eternity of suffering. Even when it was over, it didn't feel like it was over. His body was still covered in sweat and his chest heaved with each labored breath he took. Through it all, Tetsuo held him tenderly. Youji lay in his lap, weakly trying to regroup his senses.

At the feeling of a blessedly cool hand brushing against his cheek, Youji looked upward to find Tetsuo looking down at him with a clear expression of concern on his face. His brows were lightly pinched together, his lips turned down in a frown. Youji slowly turned himself around in his embrace so that he could lay with his back against his chest.

“A few minutes,” he said, begging for time. He knew that Tetsuo would give him as much time as he needed now, though, now that he was there with him.

He closed his eyes. As he lay in Tetsuo's arms and the minutes ticked by, his breathing slowly returned to normal. The lingering fear that something may still be wrong persisted, but he had a feeling that he would be feeling that way for a while to come.

The next time he slowly opened his eyes, his body felt much lighter.

“How are you?” Tetsuo asked. He grabbed a roll of toilet paper from the stack next to the toilet and began wiping the blood and other birthing fluids from between Youji's thighs.

“Alive,” he said, laughing sardonically. “I probably won't be sure if it's really alright until I've completely settled down.”

Tetsuo nodded imperceptibly. After tossing the bloodied wads of toilet tissue into the wastebin, he wrapped his arms around Youji.

The gruesome sight of the eggs laying before him on the bathroom floor filled Youji with a kind of disgust that he had never felt before. Before, even if it were unusual, a part of him had excepted the sight of them, but now they looked grotesque and alien to him. Glancing aside, he noticed that the thing that Tetsuo had crushed and set fire to had been reduced to ashes. From experience, he knew that the same could be done to the eggs.

“Burn those too,” he said, nodding his chin toward the mess on the floor. “Don't miss any of them. I don't want them here.”

They were just empty eggs, totally harmless, but all of Youji's uncertainties regarding his body's strange intruder made him wary even of those.

Tetsuo's eyes clouded with something akin to disappointment or pity, but he rose, gently situated Youji against the cabinet beneath the sink, and pulled out his lighter. At the moment, Youji didn't care much for the condition of his bathroom floor, pleased just to see the little round pieces of viscera incinerated by the flame at the end of Tetsuo's lighter. As he watched him burn them one by one, Youji put his strength into his hands and pulled his pants back up to gather a fragment of his dignity.

“Do you smoke now?” he asked, the thought suddenly tickling his brain, the first normal thing he had thought to ask since Tetsuo entered his apartment.

He shook his head, laughing softly. “No. I just keep this on me for the guys at the bar who need a light.”

“You still work at the bar? The same one?” Youji had always been tempted to visit the place, but thankfully, he didn't know which one Tetsuo worked at.

“Yeah. I just do it on the side. I'm a security guard now to support myself. I'm in university.”

It made Youji smile to hear him talking like that again, like a normal person, the way Youji remembered him to sound. Once all of the eggs had been turned to ash, he found it easier to pretend that they hadn't even been there at all, that he was just having a quiet moment, catching up with his old... friend?

In any case...

“What about you? How do you feel?” Youji felt curious, but he was also a little frightened to find out how Tetsuo would feel now that he'd destroyed the mesu in him. He'd always wondered if they were drawn together by the attraction of their mesu and osu. If those hadn't been in them, would they have cared about each other at all?

“Me?” Tetsuo actually sounded confused, and Youji's heart brightened. “Oh. I'm... I'm fine. I think I can still smell it coming from you, but just faintly. If it was really a pheromone, it'll probably be in your skin for a while. Or something.” His gaze hardened. “I won't leave you, though. Even if I can't smell it, even without that thing to link us, I still want you.”

He said that now, but only time would truly see if those words were true. For the moment, though, they were enough to satisfy Youji.

Suddenly, Tetsuo stood and began rummaging through the cabinet above the sink. Youji looked up and his eyes widened when he came out holding another bottle of sleeping pills.

“You have a lot of these in here,” Tetsuo observed.

“I... take them pretty often,” he said. He didn't want to tell him about the nightmares he had. That could be saved for another time, if he even needed to mention it at all. When the realization of what Tetsuo may be intending to do dawned on him, his heart fell to his stomach. This must have been the way Tetsuo felt when he heard him propose his absurd idea to expel his inner being. Youji wanted to tell him that he shouldn't do it, that he didn't have to now that he'd destroyed his mesu, but he felt like he understood.

It was important for them to be equal.

Tetsuo tossed a large number of the pills down his throat and took a seat next to him on the floor, finding a place that wasn't covered in blood or sick. Tetsuo was a resilient guy. The osu in him might make his body resistant to the drugs, but Youji held onto his hope. The repugnant stench of vomit crept past Youji's nose as he waited and he swallowed down another wave of nausea. At this point, he knew that there was nothing left to come from his body. Anything he felt now was a natural response from his body, responding to the unnatural scents and senses around him.

At last, it began. Tetsuo's face contorted into a mirror of the expression Youji must have donned when he felt the inner being tumbling in his stomach. Curious, he placed a hand over Tetsuo's stomach and was unsurprised when he felt something kick out against his palm. Baring his teeth, Tetsuo got on his hands and knees and waited, his entire body tense.

Youji still felt incredibly weak, but he found enough strength to sit up and kneel next to him so that he could rub his back encouragingly. As if it were repulsed by Youji's touch, the being within him responded and came pouring from Tetsuo's mouth at once. It spilled onto the floor and shuddered powerfully, flopping around like a fish pulled from the water. It knew that it had nowhere to hide, but, even without legs, it looked like it was trying to go somewhere. It stilled, then began to slither – in Youji's direction.

Tetsuo immediately raised a fist and brought it down so hard against the thing that Youji thought he heard his bones crunch when his knuckles met the floor. He punched straight through it, pulverizing it, splitting it in half. He looked like he was suffering, sweat profusely dripping down the sides of his face, but he lifted himself up from the floor and smashed it beneath the same shoe that had ended the other. Looking around wildly for his lighter, he collapsed to the floor, holding a hand to his mouth. Unable to hold back a fresh wave of nausea, he turned toward the toilet and heaved.

Finding the lighter where it had been abandoned on the floor, Youji picked it up and flicked it until he produced a flame. As he held it to the mashed pile of meat, it twitched, like it still held onto an iota of life despite being crushed so badly. Even though he no longer had the mesu within him, Youji felt like he understood the pitying expression he saw on Tetsuo's face when he set fire to Youji's expelled inner being. It was a terrible, unnatural creature, but Youji felt an unusual amount of sympathy for it when he saw it suffering in such a pitiful state.

With the way they felt, it was unmistakable that these things had been what had drawn them together.

When Tetsuo had spent the contents of his stomach, he collapsed backwards onto the tile, uncaring what kind of mess he fell into. Crawling over to him on his knees, Youji flushed the toilet for him, then sat up against the wall next to him. That was the extent of his energy for now. The bathroom seriously needed someone to attend to its condition, but neither of them had it in them to move any more.

“I bet you didn't expect this to be how our reunion would go,” Youji joked, trying to lighten the stifling air.

Tetsuo slowly shook his head, his light hair sticking to his forehead. “I was prepared for anything.”

“I bet you don't feel like doing it now, though,” Youji said, unable to control the smile that curved his lips.

However, Tetsuo sent him a look that warned him not to underestimate his sexual prowess. Even if he were covered in blood and vomit, his body beaten by an unknown, internal assailant, Tetsuo could probably still find the energy to fuck him if he wanted to.

Youji knew better than to press that issue any further. His body felt like it was going to need a lot of time to recover. Honestly, he was amazed that he was even still alive. He felt unspeakably relieved, knowing that it was the strength of his own body, his own incredibly weak, fragile body, that had been able to remove the inner being. He had to bring himself to the brink of death to do it, but he'd done it and he had survived on his own.

“I still feel like I'm dying,” Tetsuo groused, holding the balls of his palms against his closed eyes. When he pulled his hands away, he stared up at the ceiling. “What now?”

Folding his legs against his chest, Youji put his chin on top of his knees and wrapped his arms loosely around his legs. “Anything,” he said softly. “We should give it time, just to be sure. I don't want to do anything until I'm a hundred percent sure that it's really gone, but then – then... anything.”

His attention was draw downward and he noticed that Tetsuo was holding out a hand for him to take. Youji placed his palm in Tetsuo's and he held it gently, feeling the warmth of his hand seeping into his own. Even though he felt relieved, tears began to overflow from Youji's eyes.

“Can I really just be me now?” he asked quietly, his fingers tightening around the back of Tetsuo's hand. “Can I live the way I want to?”

The feeling of Tetsuo gripping his hand back was the only answer he needed.

Forward, into the future, Youji hoped to always be holding that hand.


End file.
